Big showdown looms between USA and Canada in women’s play-offs
CATHERINE HALL, St James — Defending champions and favourites USA and title contenders Canada will meet this afternoon at the Montego Bay Sports Complex in their final Group B game of the CONCACAF Women’s Under-17 Championship, starting at 6:00 pm to decide the winners going into Thursday’s semi-finals.
Both teams have won their two first-round games played to secure qualification to the semi-finals and will meet to decide who will win
the Group.
Canada lead on goal difference and a draw today will see them advance as winners.
The winner of Group B will face the runners up in Group A that was due to be decided between hosts Jamaica and Mexico with the Group B runners-up taking on the Group A winner on Thursday, also at Catherine Hall.
Meanwhile, in the first game set to start at 3:30 pm, Trinidad and Guatemala will seek to salvage some pride at the expense of each other as neither team has managed a single goal in the tournament so far.
The numbers for Trinidad and Guatemala make for dreadful reading, but highlight how badly they have been outplayed so far.
Trinidad, who beat Haiti for the Caribbean Championship, have totalled one shot in their two games so far, coming in their game against Canada and has been called for one offside. By comparison, the USA had 37 shots at their goal and earned 16 corners.
Guatemala are slightly better with four shots and a corner against Canada and one shot and one corner against the USA.
Today’s feature game, which some think could be a preview for Saturday’s final, has been highly anticipated and will pit the two most prolific scoring teams of the competition so far with a combined 31 goals at the expense of hapless Trinidad and Tobago and Guatemala.
The USA and Canada both scored 8-0 wins in their opening games against Trinidad and Guatemala, respectively, on Thursday and then returned with big wins again on Saturday.
Canada hammered Trinidad and Tobago, the champions of the Caribbean, 11-0, the biggest margin of victory so far.
The USA made seven changes to the team that had beaten Trinidad two days earlier, including Zoe Redei who scored four times, including a 15-minute first half hat-trick in their win over Guatemala.
